


Outcaste

by avanti_90



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 19:10:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avanti_90/pseuds/avanti_90
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: <i>Galeni, historical AU.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Outcaste

_London, 1872:_  
  
The  _S.S. Patna_  chugged into port in London on a cold and foggy morning. The passengers had all crowded onto the upper deck, waving and shouting to the friends and family who awaited them. Only one man was left standing alone on the far corner of the deck, stiff-backed and uncertain. 

It was hard to tell whether the rest of the passengers were avoiding him, or he them; while all of them had their eyes on the shore, his were fixed somewhere far off on the eastern horizon. His clothes were more formal than required, and his black hat was pulled low over skin almost as dark. He was speaking softly to himself, even though there was no one nearby to hear. 

In a careful, deliberately modulated voice, he said, "My name is David Galen."

The words didn't come quite right, even now, even though he'd been repeating it all the way from Bombay. He'd imitated the English accent as well as he thought he ever could, but the words still caught in his throat.

It wasn't his throat that hurt at the sound of the name.

To speak that name without hesitation, he would have to think of himself as David. He would have to play the part even in his own head - no, he would have to  _become_  the part, body and mind. Leave some portion of truth for the spirit; or commend it to the gods, perhaps, with a whispered prayer. One last sacrificial offering from a man who would never make another.  
  
The rest of the passengers were disembarking one by one. He waited. It wouldn't do to make a mistake now; to push someone by accident, to get into a fight. Too much depended on this, too much had been sacrificed for this.  
  
To cross the sea made one an outcaste, the greatest disgrace that could fall on a family of princes. Even dispossessed princes, with neither kingdom nor wealth nor following, little more than relics of a failed rebellion, still had tradition to uphold.   
  
"I'm doing it for you," he'd protested to his raging father. "I will go, because someone must."  
  
"Each day you live in that land is a day of sin," his father had said. "Each day you eat impure food, each day you live among casteless, godless men, is a day of sin. The day you cross the sea, I have no son."  
  
He'd taken it as a statement of fact; he now realized that perhaps his father had expected him to come running back, to beg forgiveness. But instead his father had been left staring as he'd broken the beads around his neck, removed the sacred thread from his wrist, and walked away.  
  
His father had been wrong. You couldn't bring down a world-girdling Empire with swords and fire; his father's men had tried and failed. You needed knowledge. You needed to understand how they'd done it.   
  
You needed to learn their ways, their weapons and weaknesses, and then one day you, too, could use them.   
  
The last but one of the passengers disembarked, and he turned around to slowly make his way across the deck, and at last to step off the ship, onto the unfamiliar earth. He stood still for a moment, staring dumbly around; standing all alone in a sea of pale skin and strange chattering voices.   
  
A tall man in official uniform saw him and walked over, looking down at him with an expression of cool superiority spreading across his face. "Your name?"  
  
The moment hung heavy as the fog; a final and irrevocable step. He took a long, slow breath of strange air, cold air deeply laden with foreign scents and nothing at all of home.   
  
"David Galen."


End file.
